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Spring training is in full swing, so it's time to get ready for baseball season. The clubs are preparing for the coming season by spending a few weeks in Florida watching their farm teams or by cherry-picking the best players from Japan. Fans, on the other hand, often turn to video game baseball to get psyched up. Major League Baseball is bring brought to console owners once again this year by 2K Sports, who delivered a game with great potential last year, despite it being saddled with bugs and sloppy execution. This year's game is a notable improvement upon last year's efforts. While there are still some gameplay issues that keep this game from being the clear-cut champ, there's no shame in making it to the playoffs.

The best aspect of MLB 2K7, the pitching system, is very well executed and results in tremendous fun on the mound. Every pitcher has a unique repertoire of pitches, each of which is rated individually. There are closers with only three different pitches to their name, for instance, while someone like Curt Schilling will bring much more variety to the table. By setting break points for your pitches instead of choosing their intended location, you can take advantage of big looping curve balls and wicked sliders, taking a pitch that looks like it's going over the middle of the plate and instead sending it dipping into the dirt. The payoff pitch system rewards you for following the catcher's instructions and targeting specific pitches into the mitt. Missing these targets, on the other hand, will reduce the effectiveness of your pitches as opposing batters see you lose your composure. It's a momentum-based system that really makes you feel like you're in control of your pitcher's destiny on the mound, and racking up the strikeouts is ultimately very satisfying.

There are multiple steps required in becoming an effective hitter in MLB 2K7. The first step is becoming adept at utilizing the batter's eye interface, which is the on-screen representation of where you believe the pitcher will be targeting his pitch. If you guess correctly, you'll receive an on-screen target showing that your guess was on the money. This will either generate more power in your swing or allow you to put the ball into play instead of sending it directly at an infielder. The next step is becoming adept at timing your backstep and swing in order to generate power. It's really all about timing, and until you can get comfortable swinging the bat at the right time, you're going to get quite frustrated at the plate. Mastering the swing stick can take many games and plenty of sessions against pitchers with different windups and releases before it can become second nature. Once you get it all down the system works well, although it doesn't quite match up with the fun you can have on the mound.

The worst aspects of Major League Baseball 2K7 come to light once the ball has been put into play. The fielding camera is difficult to deal with in many situations, and can lead to costly errors. During an office match with one of my co-workers, we had issues with the camera placement during wild pitches, such that we could not see the catcher on-screen as the perspective shifted to show the ball rolling behind home plate.

We also found that players would often misplay the ball (whether the player in question was the one at the controls or the athlete on the field we're not quite sure), with plenty of routine grounders rolling between infielders' ankles. There's a concentric circle system in place that allows you to place fielders in the correct position for fly balls, and the blue circles turn into a red field when you've made it to the right location. The trouble comes when you're struggling to simply find the active player from an awkward angle; things can get messy. Some baseball games have managed to make fielding fun, but in MLB 2K7, you generally feel pleased if you can simply avoid a massive blunder whenever a batter makes contact on your pitches. Tweaking the game's sliders extensively helps remedy some of this to a degree, of course. It's possible to speed up the fielders, give their boost a bit more juice and even decrease the occurrence of errors, but it's still very difficult to get something that approximates a real MLB game experience.